Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 7, 1991                   TAG: 9104090481
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Bob Willis/ Associate Editor
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

HUMAN RIGHTS & U.S. AID/ IRAQI ATROCITIES IN KUWAIT WEREN'T THE ONLY IN THE

Those atrocities were indeed terrible, although Saddam Hussein had long been notorious for brutality toward his own citizens. Saddam's ways did not deter the Bush administration from courting his favor in the months before he invaded Kuwait last August. Amnesty International, among others, had carefully documented Iraq's abominable record, but perhaps such reports were not part of the president's bedside reading.

Now that Bush has demonstrated his interest in human rights, maybe he could look at a few reports on other nations. He might even be able to do something about them - not by going to war, but by threatening to cut U.S. economic and military assistance. Herewith excerpts from Amnesty International's 1990 report, by nation (approximate annual American aid in parentheses):

Israel ($3 billion and rising): "About 25,000 Palestinians, including prisoners of conscience [those who tried to exercise freedom of speech], were arrested in connection with the intifada (uprising) in the occupied territories. Over 4,000 served periods in administrative detention without charge or trial. Several thousand others were tried by military courts.

"By the end of the year, over 13,000 people were still in prisons or detention centers. . . . Thousands of Palestinians were beaten while in the hands of Israeli forces or were tortured or ill-treated. . . . At least eight were reported to have died as a result. Over 260 unarmed Palestinian civilians, including children, were shot dead by Israeli forces, often in circumstances suggesting excessive use of force or deliberate killings."

Egypt ($2.2 billion and rising): "More than 8,000 political prisoners, including many prisoners of conscience, were detained for periods of one to three months without charge or trial, some repeatedly. . . . Five people were apparently imprisoned because of their religious beliefs. Torture and ill treatment of political detainees, particularly supporters of Islamic groups opposing the government, were widely reported."

Pakistan ($625 million): "At least 100 prisoners of conscience were detained [most of them briefly] for non-violent political or religious activities. . . . Torture in police custody was widespread, sometimes resulting in death. . . . In June one woman and five men were sentenced to death by stoning in Khairpur. . . . The woman's first husband alleged she had remarried without being divorced. She and her second husband were sentenced for adultery; the other four men were sentenced as accomplices of the second marriage."

Turkey ($615 million): "There were many new allegations of widespread and systematic torture of political and criminal detainees and prisoners. Even children were among the reported victims.

"The same methods of torture were reported by almost all detainees: blindfolding and being stripped naked, beatings on all parts of the body, particularly the soles of the feet, hosing with ice-cold water and applying electric shocks. . . . Some prisoners were reported to have died following torture and ill treatment." You can get three years in a Turkish prison simply for criticizing President Turgut Ozal.

El Salvador ($400 million): "The number of politically related arrests escalated following the imposition of the state of siege in November . . . At the end of the year around 500 political prisoners were facing charges involving alleged links with the armed opposition. In many cases it was alleged that the charges were based on confessions obtained under torture. . . .

"Amnesty International documented over 60 killings, allegedly carried out by government forces or `death squads' closely linked to them. . . . The majority of extrajudicial killings and other human-rights abuses allegedly committed by the military in the past remained uninvestigated." The investigation into the murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter by men in military uniforms has been stalled for more than a year. A handful of enlisted men have paid for similar crimes; their officers never have.

Guatemala ($160 million): Another death-squad country. Reports of human-rights violations jumped sharply in 1989, with people considered politically suspect disappearing or being slain by "heavily armed men in plain clothes who used unlicensed vehicles with darkened windows. . . . In many cases . . . there was evidence of official complicity." The nation has a recent history of amnesties granting immunity from prosecution to human-rights violators.

Honduras ($205 million): "Political detainees were frequently held incommunicado for days and sometimes weeks despite constitutional provisions that detainees be brought before a court within 24 hours of arrest. Torture and ill treatment . . . were reported persistently."

Not all of our friends need our financial aid, but their oppressive policies haven't alienated us.

In Kuwait, constitutional rights had been suspended for years before the invasion. Have we freed its people from the Iraqi yoke only to put them back under the emir's foot? In Kuwait, you need to be careful about criticizing the government; you could be arrested and held incommunicado, perhaps beaten or tortured.

Then there's Saudi Arabia, a throwback to feudal days. Unregenerate thieves have their hands cut off; adulterers may be publicly beheaded, the usual form of execution. Torture of prisoners, similar to that described for Turkey, is common. The Saudis also are fond of flogging: The sentence for four Kuwaitis accused of bomb attacks in Mecca was between 1,000 and 1,500 lashes. The list could go on and on; we have some remarkable friends.

Those acts, too, are atrocities. They trouble some members of Congress, but few presidents outside of Jimmy Carter, who was derided as naive and foolish. Foreign policy is driven not by idealism but a nation's self-interest - and that involves power, not purity of motive. Nations never admit this, but they do pay tribute to world opinion: The more extreme an action, the loftier the motives offered for it. Saddam claimed at one point he had taken Kuwait to help the poor, downtrodden Palestinians.

Bush was aghast at Iraqi brutality, vowed the liberation of Kuwait and said he sought a New World Order. But suppose, last August, it had been China (another gross violator of human rights) invading Tibet for the first time. George Bush would still be dry-eyed, the yellow ribbon would remain spooled, and we'd never have heard of Norman Schwarzkopf.